Scandal forces out £1.4bn funds king

THE chief executive and joint founder of The Money Portal, one of the fastest-growing firms of independent financial advisers, has dramatically quit in controversial circumstances.

Tony Morris, the company's hard-nosed dealmaker, resigned ahead of a court case last week at which he offered to be disqualified as a director for ten years over his involvement in companies that went into liquidation.

Though TMP is not implicated, Morris, 43, a martial arts expert and former chef, would have been barred from his job. His departure is a huge embarrassment to the firm, which has seen meteoric growth since it was founded four years ago. It has thousands of wealthy clients and manages more than £1.4bn.

TMP has received funding from American investment bank Bear Stearns and its board boasts a galaxy of City figures including chairman Richard Hambro, a scion of the City dynasty, and Rod Sinclair, a former director of regulator the Securities & Futures Authority.

Morris's exit comes at a critical time for TMP. It is raising capital to fund more acquisitions, which managing director Richard Craven is determined to pursue despite the loss of his key dealmaker. After Craven, Morris is the secondbiggest personal investor in TMP.

The court case that triggered Morris's resignation was brought by the Department of Trade & Industry and concerned his role as a director of several companies that went into liquidation.

Records at Companies House state that Morris has been a director of 11 firms, seven of which have been dissolved and three of which went into liquidation. His only active directorship was TMP.

One of the companies where Morris was a director and which went into liquidation was Defleet Holdings, where a fellow director was Andrew Ritchie. Until March, Ritchie was also a director of TMP.

Ritchie and another former director of TMP, John Fairclough, are being sued by the company for more than £300,000 for alleged breaches of contract and fiduciary duty, claiming they misused confidential information.

Craven stressed that shareholders had been informed of Morris's exit.

'In terms of where the business is today, no one put more into developing TMP than Tony Morris,' he said, 'but the business moves on and we will not be distracted from making further acquisitions in a sector crying out for consolidation.'

Morris said: 'From the outside, my abrupt exit may look like a bodyblow to the business but it's not. Personally, I'm battered and bruised but The Money Portal will survive.'

Morris wears Versace suits and lives near the King's Road in fashionable Chelsea with his girlfriend, a former cashier at London nightclub Stringfellows.